I Am Curious (Yellow)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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I Am Curious (Yellow) (Swedish: Jag är nyfiken - en film i gult) is a 1967 Swedish film directed by Vilgot Sjöman and starring Lena Nyman as a character named after her. It is a companon film to 1968's I Am Curious (Blue); the two were initially, intended to be one 3½ hour film. The films are named after the colours of the Swedish flag.
Style
Yellow was a landmark film that helped define the emergent change in Swedish film of the 1960s. Like a French New Wave film, the movie uses jump cuts and its story is not structured in a conventional Hollywood way. It also contains documentary elements; for example, it features a brief appearance by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who is interviewed by Sjöman about his views on civil disobedience. This interview was filmed in March 1966, when Dr. King and Harry Belafonte were in Stockholm to start a new initiative for Swedish support of African Americans.
Censorship
The film includes numerous and frank scenes of nudity and staged sexual intercourse. In one particularly controversial scene, Lena kissed her lover's flaccid penis. In 1969, the film was banned in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for being pornographic. After three court battles the U.S. Supreme Court, in Byrne v. Karalexis, 401 U.S. 216 (1970), legalized the movie by overturning the state anti-obscenity law that regulated motion pictures.
Influence
The film's title was the inspiration for:
- Curious Yellow, a virtual world in Jeff Noon's novel Vurt
- The Simpsons episode "I Am Furious Yellow"
- The Fall’s 1988 album I Am Kurious Oranj
- A fluorescent chartreuse color named "curious yellow," which Chrysler Corporation offered on its 1971 Plymouth cars.
- The Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane issue "I Am Curious (Black)" wherein Lois Lane becomes a Black woman for a day
[1] [May 2007]
